Sunday, December 20, 2015

Hokkaido - Day 1 (Singapore - Haneda Airport - New Chitose - Sapporo)

Booked JAL (S$825 x 4) many months ago, waited patiently to visit our favourite destination Japan!!!

We will be taking off at 2am.  Reached T1 at 9pm without dinner so we had Chinese food @ Paradise Inn,  because we will miss it for the next 9 days.  Will we?

Sis will be flying off an hour earlier transit at TWN.  They will only spend 4 days in Hokkaido and the rest in Taiwan.

We met in airport and both kids are too excited to sleep.  They are happy to have flight in house entertainment and enjoy before going to bed...

Not long later, we are served with mushroom soup with bread for breakfast but is not very tasty.  We reached Haneda Airport at 9.30am and need to rush for our flight at 11.30am.  Time goes very fast as we need to check in and out again.  I managed to grab some sandwiches and drink and we had our real breakfast on the way to New Chitose Airport.  Is a 1.5hr flight.

We reached New Chitose Airport at 1pm (1hr ahead of us).  1st thing we walk to international airport and collect our Hokkaido Premium Tickets.  After that we proceed to take a JR.  The journey is smoothed.  We reached Sapporo Station around 3pm.  We took around 5 mins to reach Hotel Aspen (S$250 to 300 per night).  I need a Hotel with Laundry services, a family room and Daren wanted it to be within Sapporo Station for easy assess from Station to station.  He made a good choice as the distance from JR transiting to Subway in Sapporo is not near.  Aspen is not a very new hotel but good enough for us, the people can speak good English and very professional.  In room network is a bit slow but we can adapt to it.  Overall we are happy with our choice. Kids are ok with the distance as they start to play with snow along the path...

Everyone had to carry a backpack so did Rayen...  We went to JR information counter and booked our reserved JR tickets to Noboribetsi, Asahikawa JR and Zoo pass and Otaru 1 day welcome pass for adult.  Their staff are English educated and friendly, kids talking to a few of the ladies and they even able to write out their name in Japanese.

After confirming on logistic we took our dinner at Diamaru.  There are around 4 shopping centres around JR station.  I do not have enough time to venture around.

We choose to eat Soba on our 1st meal in Sapporo, not bad at all. Kids prefer cold soba than hot.

We walked to Esta as there is a huge Uniqlo and Daren like to look at their IT products.

We also bought some fruits and food from Paeso Basement.

We received some voucher to exchange for lucky draw coupon and kids get a #9 prize...  a S$2 voucher for them to get more candy and sweet.

All shop closed around 8.30 to 9pm, we return back to our room and make the 2 kids sleep before going for supper.  We had bbq stick and sake, it was so yummy!

After supper I walked to their 7-11 to purchase some titbits for tomorrow while hb return back to our room.  Is a wonderful 1st day in Hokkaido.

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